Orange Beet Soup

I should judge the difficulty of recipes on my ability to make them after a bike ride (yam and black bean stew, I’ve got my eyes on you!). To be honest, I don’t think any of my recipes are hard to make (heck, even I can make it!) but I know some can be lengthy, especially if dried beans are involved.

Last weekend, I cycled to Kitchener with a friend. We opted to take a shorter route home, cycling to the Aldershot GO Station in Burlington and training the rest of the way home. I cycled 209km that weekend, and with the shorter distance on Sunday, it meant I was home by 3:30pm and able to do some weekend chores.

Um, no. Utter fail.

I got as far as: a) blending myself a recovery smoothie with banana and maca; b) during the post-ride euphoria, calling Rob to tell him I arrived alive; c) taking a nice warm bath; d) throwing all my cycling clothes in the washing machine to get washed; e) making this soup; f) unexpectedly catching up with an old friend over the phone for an hour…. Giving my mom a well-deserved (brain-supported) phone call, unfortunately was not in the cards (=biggest failure). :(

Thank goodness I still had some delicious leftover raw pad thai for dinner that I picked up from Thrive Juice Bar in Waterloo (which travelled incredibly well over 80km on my bike!). (Their big green juice with maca was also exactly what I needed when I finally arrived in Waterloo).

Anyways, I had a few recipes on my week’s menu, but was only able to muster enough energy to make this Orange Beet Soup, adapted from The 30-Minute Vegan. I figured it would be a simple thing to throw together and should take under 30 minutes, right?

Obviously, in my post-cycle haze, my coordination (hand and mental) decrease. It took me more like 45 minutes and I didn’t even grate my vegetables by hand (thank you food processor!) plus another 15 minutes to clean (curse you food processor!) . I peeled my beets which took up a lot of time, and probably unnecessary in retrospect.

Also problematic: juicing my oranges. 1.5 cups of freshly squeezed orange juice. By me armed with my lemon squisher. 4 oranges later and many more minutes later, I had it all. Reinfeld may suggest 1-2 oranges, but that is impossible! Unless you get so much more juice with a juicer? Or pick an incredibly juicy one from a tree in Florida? Because I use all the pre-juicing tricks: microwave for 20 seconds, smash it and roll it around on the counter. And it took me just over 3 oranges. ;)

Anyways, I will see if my kitchen speed increases if I were to make this at any other time.

Because this is a great soup and should get repeated. Like when I have a garden filled with beets (oh yes!).

Simple ingredients layer to create a nice, light, flavourful soup. Beet is at its core, but it is sweet from the layers of orange and carrots. The dill add another dimension with a nod to the Eastern European pairing of beet and dill, and the red miso creates that subtle complexity.

This soup is great warm and chilled. Chilled, it is a refreshing and bright starter and if I had a high-powered blender, this would make this the ultimate savoury summer drink (my immersion blender left a bit of pulp, which is fine for something labelled as soup).

After hanging up with my friend, it was 7pm, and I was positively pooped. I didn’t even photograph the soup. Yet. (It was photographed as leftovers the next day, which is also when my mom got the brain-active phone call she deserved!). ;)

I cleaned up my kitchen and called it a night and fell asleep around 8pm, before the sun had even gone to bed.

1. Start boiling the water and beets over medium heat in a large covered pot while you work on the other vegetables. Add the carrots, covering the pot in between. Add the salt, dill, and orange zest, cover the pot, and simmer for about 5 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.

2. Combine orange juice with miso and combine until smooth.

3. Remove from the heat, add the orange juice and miso mixture,and blend until smooth (use an immersion blender or blend in batches in a blender – if you have one of those high powered blenders, this would work well!).

4. Serve chilled or warmed up. Do not boil once the miso has been added.

This was so funny to read. It made me laugh and even want to try to make the soup. BTW, there are tricks to orange juice that do not require a lot of effort. Not fresh squeezed by hand but a dollop of good frozen orange juice contentrate usually does the trick for me when the task of freshly squeezed OJ appears to be too much effort.

I love, love, love beets, and orange is a wonderful compliment to them. I haven’t had the combination in soup form, but how could it not be amazing?

Oh, and I live in Florida, where I have incredibly juicy oranges that grow on a tree in my backyard, which I juice with a electric juicer, and there is no way I’d get 1.5 cups of juice from 1 orange. Or even 2!

[…] Loved it. It wasn’t the star of the meal, but it added an extra dimension. Then I made the orange-beet soup that had an extra twist from the miso. Followed up by the exquisitely delicious zesty orange cashew […]

[…] it can go unnoticed. Or shunned when it takes centre stage. I enjoy combining fruit into savoury dishes, and my curiosity was piqued when some friends recommended the bulgur and cantaloupe salad in […]

[…] For the record, these tacos were great, but not nearly as fantastic as those at Raw Aura. It just gives me more incentive to go back to the resto. At least it is closer than Thrive Juice Bar in Waterloo, which is my other favourite restaurant. […]

[…] a lot of different flavours, but they definitely pair well with orange. I really enjoyed my chilled Orange and Beet Soup with miso, dill and carrots, and thought this rice-based salad sounded great. Adapted from Appetite […]

[…] With 2 new raw cookbooks from the library, I have become very curious about some of the simpler raw dishes. Raw soups are among them, which seem like a glorious medley of vegetables and flavours. While I am no virgin to raw soups (remember that mango gazpacho?), the difference between juice, smoothie and soup always runs through my head. Plus, raw soups can easily be done wrong if your vegetables are not fresh, if you add too much or too little water or if your blender is not up to snuff. (This is definitely where the Vitamix excels because who wants a lumpy soup?) […]